Talib Kweli has a welterweight’s agility, and Jay-Z has a middleweight’s saunter, but the rappers have claimed the heavyweight titles in their respective rings. After defining the parameters of underground hip-hop in 1998 as half of Black Star, Kweli has since dedicated himself to shredding those parameters, renouncing the asceticism…
Ladytron makes music simultaneously from decades past and decades yet to come. Their layered beats and hovercraft grooves suggest the morning radio of an anonymous metropolis circa A.D. 2804 or the most forward-looking synth-pop of 1982. Which brings us to some place in the middle of that continuum: The group’s…
Poignancy, it appears, still has a place on the country music charts. Not the jingoistic type that made anthem-spiked heroes out of Toby Keith (“The Angry American”) and Alan Jackson (“Where Were You”), but the real poignancy of honoring loved ones, making deeply felt confessions of the Merle Haggard variety…
Theory of a Deadman revels in the powder-keg dynamics of grunge, continuing the string of admirers that followed Soundgarden and Alice in Chains to the FM dial — put Days of the New, Nickelback and this band in a pickle barrel and dare to tell the difference. That’s likely no…
They’ve always been enamored of glam metal, but on their first major-label record and fifth release, Spend the Night, in-your-face punk hotties the Donnas manage to sound more like Mötley Crüe than Mötley Crüe has since, like, Girls, Girls, Girls. “We’d watch MTV and see Mötley Crüe on Headbanger’s Ball,…
Beck Hansen is now a communicator, a breakthrough that has led to the year’s most startling music. Beck may not stand as the artist of the 1990s. Change that: Some of his music from that decade is unlistenable. To Beck’s credit, however, he was an artist of the ’90s. His…
The acolyte will deride the obvious misses amid this collection of hits; the casual fan won’t even notice, since the casual fan skipped most of the band’s ’90s output anyway. Still, it’s amazing that U2 could fill two discs this go-round, since there were half as many albums to choose…
More of a political movement than a band, Godspeed You Black Emperor! is Montreal’s collection of commune-dwelling, hard-core-loving psychedelic anarchists. And God bless them for it. Somebody has to be the voice of the opposition — even if they don’t actually speak. A near-orchestra (multiple drums, guitars and basses, plus…
Tracy Chapman’s songs are comfort food for the eternally dejected. With her dusky voice and spare arrangements, the former street busker has built a career on tales of heartache and pain (“Fast Car,” “Give Me One Reason”), little of it more starkly expressed than on Let It Rain, her sixth…
Once upon a time, Pearl Jam seemed to live for a reaction, a trait that catapulted it to the forefront of grunge. The band blazed its brand of arena rock for the sole purpose of shoving it in listeners’ faces. Their faithful hung on every power chord and deep Eddie…
With his latest Mushroom Jazz compilation, Mark Farina, the preternatural DJ who’s made his name on the looped-out frames of San Francisco and Chicago house, continues the trend of cut-up artists sampling a more soothing style in search of a vibe that will satisfy a club crowd not as young…
MC Paul Barman’s musical credentials stray from the beaten path. Few could’ve predicted that a white, Jewish graduate of Brown University would issue one of 2002’s best hip-hop albums, and Paullelujah!, a polychromatic tour through Barman’s cracked cranium, is just that. Too smart for his own good and too horny…
The Lords of Acid love whips. Chains. Leather. European hotties. And sex with multiple ambiguously oriented partners, all while under the influence of illegal substances. Yet even without lyrics like “Put me on your burning spear” or “I wanna sit on your face,” the talented Lords of Acid would still…
Tank top, $15, by Calvin Klein. Platinum-rivet jeans, $450, by Armani. Baseball bat, $180, by Louisville Slugger. . . . Dante “Akil” Givens, one of four rappers in tag-team hip-hop crew Jurassic 5 — the in-favor crew of the moment on college campuses — thumbs through the stack of magazines…
“I think Darryl Worley might be the next Alan Jackson.” These words pour from DreamWorks Records president James Stroud, producer for Worley, among the year’s breakout country stars. That’s a tall order when you consider that celebrated everyman Jackson (“Chattahoochee,” the 9/11 memoriam “Where Were You”) walked off stage at…
Late last month, Interscope Records at long last released Nirvana, a 14-song best-of with not only tracks from Bleach, Nevermind, In Utero and Unplugged, but also the long-lost “You Know You’re Right.” The song, recorded in 1994 by Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, had been stalled by litigation…
Orville “Shaggy” Burrell has returned for his fourth act. The Brooklyn-by-way-of-Jamaica reggae superstar reached stardom in the mid-1990s, fell back into obscurity and then reexploded in 2000 with the 10 million-selling Ho tshot, which fused his roughneck dance-hall sound with slick R&B production to spawn the massive hit “It Wasn’t…
In this media-soaked age, when every move a pop star makes is an “event,” it’s easy to overlook the genuine article. Nowadays, Bob Dylan tours more than constantly. But in 1975, his live appearances were rare, and news of “The Rolling Thunder Review,” as that year’s tour was called, was…
Floetry is the sound of Great Britain trying desperately to grab onto the burgeoning U.S. neo-soul movement. The work of young chanteuses Floacist and Songstress, as they call themselves, appropriates the languishing rhythms of Maxwell, the Afrocentricity of Erykah Badu, the quieted vocal delivery of D’Angelo, the smooth rapping of…
Until 2000’s The Hour of the Bewilderbeast, Damon Gough could make his music without a fuss, which is clearly the way he likes it. Since the beginning, he’s cultivated a look-at-me anonymity, like a superhero with a secret identity, conspicuously hiding behind his trademark knit cap and beard. But after…
Poncho Sánchez’s reputation as the ultimate Latin jazz party bandleader is quite misleading. The guy has been a top conguero since the 1980s, but his sin was growing up in Laredo, Texas, not in Cuba or Puerto Rico. After he won a Latin Grammy (his first major award) in 2000,…
Gogogo Airheart defies clear description. Hooray, them! But here goes: GGG Airheart is lo-fi, smart-art rock — electrifying and mysterious. Old and new simultaneously, the music is moody and off kilter. You may laugh at the unusual musical fusions upon first listen to their new release, Exitheuxa, but by the…
